The Hidden Cost of High Commissions in Delivery: Why Lean Platforms Win

The delivery ecosystem in India looks shiny from the outside — billion-dollar valuations, 10-minute promises, and aggressive cashback wars. But behind the scenes, something far less sustainable is unfolding.

While consumers get used to convenience and investors chase growth, the core economics of delivery are quietly collapsing under the weight of high commissions, inflated burn rates, and unsustainable discounting. This post is written from Yori’s perspective — a lean, fearless superapp approach that prioritizes unit economics, capital efficiency, and trust across the network.

The Illusion of Growth

Most delivery platforms today charge restaurants and merchants commissions between 25%–35%, often layered with “marketing” or “visibility” fees. On paper, it looks like a revenue engine. In reality, it can turn into a tax on the very ecosystem they rely on.

Merchants operate on razor-thin margins — frequently single-digit profits — while customers have been trained to expect free or discounted delivery. The gap is bridged by investor capital rather than real cash flow, propped up by vanity metrics like GMV, MAU, and order frequency. The only number that matters is contribution margin per order after discounts, incentives, and last-mile costs.

When commissions rise faster than merchant profitability, platforms back themselves into a corner: churn increases, discount expectations harden, and the marketing flywheel becomes a treadmill.

The Broken Trust Loop

• Customers face inconsistent pricing, surge logic, and dark patterns that erode loyalty.
• Merchants lose direct relationships and pay escalating take rates that compress margins.
• Riders/Drivers see volatile earnings and limited progression, treated as a cost center instead of partners.

This is a trust deficit. Cashback can rent attention, but it can’t buy trust — and trust is what compounds into retention and healthy LTV/CAC.

Yori’s Philosophy: Lean, Fair, and Fearless

Yori is building a lean superapp — rides, deliveries, and local services — on shared infrastructure rather than siloed stacks. Our stance is simple: fairness scales better than discounts.

• Sustainable take rates: predictable, merchant-friendly commissions designed to grow the pie rather than extract from it.
• Shared identity & wallet: one account across verticals, improving activation and retention without paying the CAC tax every time.
• Operational leverage: unified logistics, support, and data — fewer parallel teams, more reusable rails.
• Partner-first economics: transparent earnings logic for riders/drivers and clear value for merchants.

Our margin comes from efficiency, not exploitation; from network effects, not gimmicks; from unit-level profitability, not valuation headlines.

The Investor Lens: Why Lean Wins

Capital is already shifting from growth-at-any-cost to capital-efficient growth, positive contribution margins, and retention-led compounding. The next decade won’t be defined by speed alone but by sustainability.

• Lower blended CAC: multi-vertical cross-sell reduces re-acquisition spend.
• Higher LTV: wallet + identity + habit loops across use cases.
• Healthy take rates: equitable commissions keep merchants and riders in the network.
• Reduced burn rate: shared infrastructure and disciplined ops instead of parallel stacks.

We call this Lean Network Economics — each transaction strengthens the ecosystem instead of draining it. It’s how we target contribution-positive cohorts early, and expand without setting fire to the cap table.

How We Execute Differently

• Pricing transparency: no hidden fees; merchants know exactly what they pay and why.
• Local-first playbooks: city-by-city depth over shallow national breadth; partnerships with on-ground operators.
• Operational discipline: tight inventory of promos, incentive thresholds tied to repeat behavior, and clear sunset rules.
• Rider economics: route density, batching where appropriate, and safety nets that protect take-home earnings.

None of this is glamorous — which is why it works. It is the anti-theater of sustainable marketplaces.

The Road Ahead

India’s delivery market is at an inflection point. The winners will be those who can turn trust into retention and efficiency into margin — not those who can print the biggest coupons.

Yori is not chasing hypergrowth. We’re building infrastructure for everyday life with a bias for healthy unit economics, fair incentives, and durable partnerships. That’s how you compound value — for customers, for merchants and riders, and for investors who care about real profitability.